Little Bird (18 page)

I laughed as the accordion kicked in, a fast, frenzied tune that made everyone want to ‘yee' and ‘ha'.

The band slowed the tempo for the next song and Shandra and Damien danced as darkness drifted over our backyard. The stars came out one by one, and Colette's

voice wound upwards like smoke into the velvet sky. I closed my eyes and listened to the words.

I'm a bird on the air

and I'm tired up there

let me sleep on a stretch of the sky

Let me rest with the wind

Let me go where it blows

Let me go, go gently down

I'm a bird, just a bird

just a little blackbird,

but I aint got a song of my own

just feathers and bones

and I aint, no I aint

got a song of my own

feathers and bones

I opened my eyes. Ed was looking at me. He grinned.

I smiled radiantly back. I knew I had a song of my own. I didn't know what it was yet, but it was in there, ready to burst out.

I turned to see Maisy climbing up onto my dad's knee, while on the other side of the garden Mum held baby William. She looked content with a baby in her arms; it suited her. She'd held me like that. One day she would hold my baby.

I danced with Stefan, and later with Paula, William and Dad in a clumsy foursome. I sat the next one out, and contemplated the garden and the back of the house, and smiled at the rusty gate that Ed and I had saved from the renovations. I'd thought this was a broken home, a broken family. I was wrong. It was just shifting with time, changing shape. It would change again – it would keep changing, as Shandra and I had babies, as Mum and Stefan and Dad and Paula got older, as William grew up.

The band had a break and Ed and I danced to the stereo instead. All the oldies kept telling us how cute we were together. Ed and I grinned and winked at each other and said nothing, but we danced so close, with his body brushing against mine.

Later in the night, I rocked Maisy while the band played her a gypsy lullaby, and everyone sang to us. She slept with her fluttering heart next to mine until Mrs Kane took her home.

And then, at the end of it all, we made a tunnel with our arms for Shandra and Damien to duck through, and there she went, my sister, Mrs Shandra Wilson.

I snuck into Shandra's room and whispered another goodbye, to Shandra King, who didn't live here anymore. Mum and Dad and Stefan and Paula toasted the bride and groom one last time in the kitchen while baby William slept in his pram. And I went to bed and closed my eyes, my head whirling, until I caught my wild thoughts and sent them out into the air, on wings made out of dreams.

About the Author

Penni Russon grew up in Hobart. As a young adult she worked in childcare, where she fell in love with countless children, before commencing her studies in Classics. At the age of twenty-one she left the island and continued her studies in Melbourne, intending to be an archeologist. Somehow she became a writer. She now lives on the outskirts of Melbourne with her husband and two daughters, and visits Tasmania often.

Penni is the author of popular Girlfriend novel
The Indigo Girls
, and also the urban fantasy novels for teenagers,
Undine, Breathe and Drift
– a lyrical trilogy about magic, power, desire and possibility.

You can catch Penni online at
www.eglantinescake.blogspot.com